Saturday, 9 April 2011

Fans of Twilight may know Peter Facinelli as the DILF-y vampire Dr. Carlisle Cullen but there is more to PFac than playing Robert Pattinson‘s dad – the Queens-born actor is currently working onLoosies (a film that he wrote, produced and starred in) with his new production company, Facinelli Films. Peter took some time out of his hectic Breaking Dawn filming schedule to chat with Celebuzz about the making of Loosies and how he feels about Twilight finally coming to a close.

Tell us a little bit about your character in Loosies.

I play a pickpocket in New York who he lives with his mom [laughs] and his mom thinks he works on Wall Street. So, every day he walks out of the house in a suit and tie and he walks down to the subway and that’s his office and he just pickpockets the people all day. He’s a pickpocket because he’s in debt, his father left him with $500,000 in gambling debts, so he has to pay off the person that his father was indebted to which is VincentGallo‘s character so it kind of took his life into a whole different direction.

He lives this fast, loose kind of Steve McQueen kind of lifestyle and one day he gets tapped on the shoulder and this girl that he had a one night stand with tells him that she’s pregnant and his whole world just kind of collapses around him because he has to grow up and take responsibility for something, so it’s a fun story.

What was your motivation for starting your own production company, Facinelli Films, and creating your own films?

You know I had a couple of films that I had written and I thought it was time to get them off the ground. I wrote a television movie for the Hallmark Channel that aired last month and that my wife [Jennie Garth] starred in called Accidentally in Love and it did really well in the ratings so I was really happy about that. Loosies was the second movie that I had written and we shot it last August and are now in the middle of post-production.

To be able to create something and give other people a job and have the whole crew working on something that was just an idea in your head, that was very exciting for me.

What was it like working with your wife in a movie that you wrote?

It was fun to have my wife actually say the lines that I wrote. When you’re writing something in your head you wonder if it’s going to work and I got to go down to the set and watch all the actors kind of bring it to life. WithLoosies I was in it so I had to bring the words that I wrote to life. It was a lot of fun to have something that I wrote that I was able to act in and also have more control over from the producing side and be able to hire people and the cast that I thought were talented.

In the film you play a pickpocket – did you have to learn any pickpocketing tricks?

Yeah I did. I met with this guy and he taught me the tools of the trade [laughs] and how to pickpocket watches and wallets and I learned a lot and we implemented it in the film.

Actually, in one of the scenes I pick pocketed the actor and he didn’t even know that I had done it. In another scene we shot outside I pick pocketed this one actor and walked away and this lady had seen me do it and she ran over to the guy and she said, ‘You just got pick pocketed!’ [laughs] She had no idea we were filming.

Is shooting in New York different than shooting in Los Angeles or on different locations?

New York City is a character in itself. I wanted to really capture New York because I grew up there and this film was my homage to New York City. I don’t know if I have preferences [on where I shoot] since films are set in different places and right now I’m in the middle of Canada shooting Twilight 4 and 5 but I’ve always loved the City’s streets and I wanted to make that a big part of this film.

You mentioned that you are in the middle of shooting Breaking Dawn, is it a bittersweet feeling to know that the Twilight Saga is coming to a close?

Yeah. I mean, we’re so busy working that I don’t think that we’ve wrapped our heads around the fact that it’s ending soon. We still have another month to go so right now we’re just knee-deep in the work of it. I haven’t really given much thought to it being over. Even when it’s over, the films will be coming out over the next two years so I’ll still see everybody.

To read the full article, fan questions/answers and see exclusive photos from Loosies click here